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See what “Krivulin, Viktor Borisovich” is in other dictionaries. Victor Krivulin. Poems Viktor Borisovich Krivulin poet family

- (1944 March 17, 2001, St. Petersburg), Russian poet. At the center of Krivulin’s poetry are religious motives, the theme of personal guilt and responsibility for what is happening in the world. Creatively, he is close to Anna Akhmatova (see AKHMATOVA Anna Andreevna) and Joseph... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

KRIVULIN Viktor Borisovich- (b. 1944) Russian writer. The poetry is centered on religious motifs, the theme of personal guilt and responsibility for what is happening in the world. Initially published mainly in samizdat. Published an unofficial literary and artistic magazine 37 (total... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Krivulin Viktor Borisovich- Viktor Borisovich Krivulin (July 9, 1944, Kadievka village, Voroshilovgrad region; March 17, 2001, St. Petersburg) Russian poet, essayist, philologist. Graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Leningrad State University. A prominent figure in the unofficial culture of Leningrad. Prize winner... Wikipedia

Krivulin, Viktor Borisovich- Genus. 1944, d. 2001. Poet, representative of samizdat culture. Publisher of the unofficial literary and artistic magazine "37". Author of several poetry collections. In the last years of his life, the demoross politician... Large biographical encyclopedia

Viktor Borisovich Krivulin- (July 9, 1944, Kadievka village, Voroshilovgrad region; March 17, 2001, St. Petersburg) Russian poet, essayist, philologist. Graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Leningrad State University. A prominent figure in the unofficial culture of Leningrad. Laureate of the Andrei Bely Prize for 1978 ... Wikipedia

Krivulin- Krivulin, Viktor Borisovich Viktor Krivulin Date of birth: July 9, 1944 (1944 07 09) Place of birth: Kadievka (Voroshilovgrad region) Date of death: March 17, 2001 (2001 03 17 ... Wikipedia

Volchek, Dmitry Borisovich- Wikipedia has articles about other people with the same surname, see Volchek. Dmitry Borisovich Volchek (born June 18, 1964, Leningrad, RSFSR) Russian poet, novelist, translator, publisher. Contents 1 Biography 2 Translations ... Wikipedia

Modern Russian poets- ... Wikipedia

Samizdat poets- Samizdat poets are authors for whom participation in the uncensored literary life of the late 1950s and mid-1980s. (and above all publications in samizdat) was the main method of literary behavior. Thus, in this... ... Wikipedia

List of writers and poets of St. Petersburg- This is a service list of the state ... Wikipedia

Books

Sunday clouds Buy for 770 UAH (Ukraine only)
Sunday clouds, Viktor Borisovich Krivulin. The proposed collection of poems by Viktor Krivulin selectively represents his poetic work from the late sixties to the mid-eighties. This is the time when Krivulin, together with...

Viktor Borisovich Krivulin - poet, prose writer and essayist, philologist, central figure of Leningrad unofficial culture.

From a 1995 interview: “For me, and for many other St. Petersburg poets, communication with artists was of great importance. The same thing happened in Moscow, however. And in general, among my friends there are more artists than poets.”

Victor Krivulin wrote articles about Mikhail Shvartsman, Alexander Aksinin, Anatoly Vasiliev, Mikhail Shemyakin, Evgeny Mikhnov-Voitenko, Igor Zakharov-Ross, Lev Smorgon, Marina Spivak, and about the artists of the Mitki group.

I’ll remember the artist when it’s impossible to imagine
in the heart of crazy life:
empty room
covered with yellowed newspaper.

So, in the fall I’ll remember (when else?), turning to
in the spirit of the best traditions
to the diversity of foliage and neighbors, -
Is there an artist crowd here?

Here. Where else? Where can he go from here?
from the occupation of coughing and smoldering,
from a collection of cold spots
on woolen canvas?... Are we traveling or getting sick -

everyone is glued to childhood, covered in spider saliva!
It will happen to remember the artist,
I'll have a chance:
will a brick fall, will a truck hit an eyewitness,

will the crowd of the spot of existence grow on the asphalt,
or something like that -
imagine a room
yearning for secret freedom.

There is the pinnacle of the possible. Dusty walls and roofs,
and portraits of flowers immersed
in your reflections... I don’t remember anything above
dead life in rolls!

Nothing happens. Lord, even with those
who has a random gift
I discovered a coincidence!..
Day - attic. Night - basement. The ghost of creativity.
A cloud of steam.

October 1972

Victor Krivulin was born on July 9, 1944 in the village. Kadievka, Voroshilovgrad region, in a military field hospital (the parents fought on the Leningrad Front, and after breaking the blockade - on the 4th Ukrainian Front). Lived in St. Petersburg.
Graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Leningrad University.
In the 70s - one of the largest figures in Russian literary and cultural samizdat (magazines "37", "Northern Post")
First laureate of the Andrei Bely Prize in poetry (1978).
In the early 90s, he was a member of the editorial board of the journal "Bulletin of New Literature".
Member of the Writers' Union. Vice-president of the St. Petersburg Russian PEN Club.
Head of the workshop-studio of young poets.
In the 90s he conducted extensive literary and social activities.

I’ll ask Tyutchev what sea he’s driving into
fragments of ice soviet calendar,
and if time is God's creature,
then why doesn’t he shed crystal tears?
And why out of fear and shame
the big-eyed water darkens,
Are the eyes on the icon dimming?
Before the inanimate world, in confusion, in turmoil,
in a spiritual pool, like a voiceless fish,
you are the look of one blinded by tears,
with a heavy shine, heavier than mercury...
I’ll ask Tyutchev, but mentally, secretly -
how to say in heavenly language
about the dying minute?
We will sing away the time, and the dried-up body
Let's cover it carefully with the most delicate veil...
Kinship to native history
don’t deny, darling, don’t hope,
that the delirium of centuries and the dull captivity of minutes
passes you by - do you believe it, they will return you
good to the original owner.
And hordes of shadows from lives lived in vain
will fill the streets and rooms to the brim...
And - How to breathe? I’ll ask Tyutchev
And regret who?

Victor Krivulin. Drawing by Leonid Simonovsky.

About Me

- It’s a shame to write about myself, and yet I’ve been doing this my entire adult life, choosing meditative elegy as the predominant genre, perhaps because in other types of verbal activity the “I” of the writer is not so significant. If we switch to the language of questionnaires and Plutarch, it turns out that I was born in July 1944 somewhere in the region of Krasnodon, famous by Fadeev, with whom my father, the then military commandant of this town, was familiar through the nature of his service, helping to collect materials for future novel "The Young Guard". From 1947 to this day, with minor breaks in Moscow, Paris and Crimea, I have lived in Leningrad, which today can again be called St. Petersburg. I entered the Italian department of the Faculty of Philology with the sole purpose of reading The Divine Comedy in the original language. This goal has not yet been achieved... Be that as it may, I have already graduated from the Russian department (my thesis on Innokenty Annensky). I have been writing poetry for as long as I can remember, but I began to take them seriously only after 1970, when while reading Baratynsky (Boratynsky?) I had, so to speak, a formative insight - and I seemed to have acquired a magical breathing knowledge of my own, unique intonation, unique, like fingerprints. Feeling that I belong to the so-called new Leningrad poetic school (Brodsky, Stratanovsky, Schwartz, Mironov, Okhapkin), with its authors common balancing on the brink of irony and pathos, absurdity and spiritual soaring, surrealism and empire style, I dare to say that in many ways I differ from the mentioned authors. I will not hide the fact that I experienced a certain influence from Moscow conceptualists (Prigov, Rubinstein) - however, not so much literary as human. I write in quanta, combining texts into small collections (something between a poetic cycle and a poem), which, in turn, spontaneously merge into a larger text, organized more according to the laws of architectural and musical composition than according to literary rules themselves. The first such book - "Sunday Clouds" - was published in samizdat in 1972, the last - "At the Window" - in 1992. Over twenty years, the poetic manner, naturally, has undergone significant changes, but the intonation has changed least of all. I wrote prose, now I am engaged in journalism, I am working on a book of essays about modern Russian culture.

Victor Krivulin. 1993

Poems by Viktor Krivulin in "Babylon" #2

Portrait of Viktor Krivulin. ArtistValery Mishin

ON THE ROAD AT THE CROSS
sometimes piercing, sometimes cutting comfort
that spectacle in the homemade light
glass and music - Russians sing there
in your farewell language,

Almost in English - groping for the cross
imbedded between nipples
now stabbing, now cutting, now filigree
decorated - to pay for travel

From St. Petersburg to Geneva
appointed long ago, since then
like a poor knight from the Virgin Mary
had one last vision

Determined and quiet conversation

St. Petersburg poet, living classic Viktor Krivulin listens with interest to the creativity of the young generation. On stage - Dima Vodennikov

SUNDAY CLOUDS

(book text provided by Olga Kushlina)

He who has seen angels glows himself,
Although with reflected light.
Who spoke to them - the bee is spellbound
It will stick to his lips...

SUNDAY CLOUDS

SUNDAY

Look: the day is so quiet,
that it’s time to doubt -
do you exist? isn't it a ghost? On faces
the Sunday dream has come, and in their congregation
do you recognize yours when it swirls
The crowd is like smoke - isn't it time to say goodbye?
with the underground of your thoughts?
Isn't it time to take it from red hands?
a sip of rest and smoke?
That’s why I’m paid for my unloved work,
that Sunday is quiet, that leisure is cloudy,
that life is driven by the wind over the city,
as if extinct - so unsociable
collection of channels and separations...

CLOUD OF RESURRECTION

Where you go, nothing moves,
but the step stone is tightly tied
at my feet. With a gospel story
do not resurrect. Word-sieve
does not hold moisture. The splash overwhelms
granite damage, where the patient
floating in a somnambulant car

Story. Where are you going - frozen
quote from the night, taken out of context,
unenlightened stone of place,
but the past bridge's decking is wobbly
over the abyss. Sifted through a sieve,
powdery snow hangs over Sunday.
I am getting up. Not enough strength

From the shroud of incinerated years
palms out.
The route to work goes around a puddle,
where the dark silhouette sways
classical building. Establishment
lies on the pavement, pretending to be a shadow.
But there is no shadow cast,
in the world of man. you passed
from night to night.

February 1974

CITY WALK

Yes, different cartilage...
E. Boratynsky

Sand squeaking on your teeth. Black dust particles.
Freshly rolled asphalt is hot, like black soil.
Smoking field. First thunder.
This fat layer of earth is the possibility of abundance.
Let there be a different kind of cartilage! Along the streets together
where the repairs were going on, we wandered around all day.
Let there be a different kind of cartilage. And I asked:
Where is the sowing, where is the canvas sower?
And the oak tree you started
Did you have the strength to climb?
There were renovations going on everywhere. Cruel cover
deprived land - and the mysteries of the graves -

Here and there it appeared ugly and rusty,
like blood stains through bandages...
And he replied that the gravestones
It’s not at all difficult to pull back the covers,
It is not at all difficult to rise from muteness:
for those who were grains, even a word is not enough.

Who was the grain, who was the seed?
yes, some cartilage is indeed fruitful,
and his life will be extended by straight trunks of pine trees,
and, once thrown into the darkness
will rise from the darkness, and we will easily discard
a bed of slush - the last prison.
Yes, Boratynsky, you live. Your path
In other words, he moves his needles.
But I have to lie down in the asphalt that is laid above the ground!
Not to the ground, but to a place where you can’t die,
to be resurrected. Repairs were underway. Melted resin
pulled from everywhere...

DAEMON

Yes, I write, we encourage
demon of black saturdays
with demos name: sweat
wipe with a dirty hand,
with an oiled rag, edge
bloody freedoms.

How unlike a bee
our saddened work!
Moving piles
crushed stone, paper and clay -
creativity without a core
all-weaving octopus.

Building with concentration
honeycomb of your emptiness,
whose octagonal mouths
filled with black resin
honey is the sun thick
are you looking to try?

But you get work
chemistry - the taste of ink.
The wines I drank
mixed with Saturday poison...
Swamps of pale suburbs,
God! how I loved

For the chaos that is brewing
under the skin of the earth,
behind the train in the distance,
that she wandered, stumbling...
Yes! - I scream, I’m choking
after her. But the years have passed.

There, at sunset, buildings
flowing like a river of honey...
Factory pipe tip
the sun cut with shadow.
— Yellow Shadow of Sunday
May he not rise with you!

SUNDAY

How difficult everything is! Rare snow flickers
between rare branches. In mercury lighting
dead man, drinking man,
a bag of momentary goodness, -
will not cause any pity or evil,
but every fate is pure and beyond jurisdiction,
when she passed by unrecognized like that.
What do I care about this private life,
to a fraction chosen from a whole number

For an incurably ugly moment!
The crown was put on. Sunday. Hop,
like gossip, it reigns behind the eyes.

And the drunkard drags the invisible bed
everywhere with you. - Lazarus! Lazarus!
can’t hear, collapsed onto the panel.

ANGEL AUGUST

Oh, sprinkle me with greenery along with the dust!
Give me dusty green mold.
The days are burning away from the last warmth.
The sleepy moths' wings have fallen.
But temporary dreams of abundance
momentarily asleep in the shadows.

That hardened angel of fertility,
spreading lilac wings,
leans over him - then the fat woman lies down
shadow on the soil, and worms in the garden
from the fat belly of the land of gluttony
released... Numbers
they don't. They swarm and entwine the body
fallen asleep after work.
Tunnels in the pulp of fruits,
whether in green pulp, in white -
and black and rust. And death to nature is ripe
like a woman after childbirth!

Oh, green in my eyes! - also mold
it can be soft green -
mold for the last time... In the last burst of sleep
yours, August, the moment is both sweet and tight!

August 1971

***
I hear the squeal of the eagle grille,
wonderful coldness of cast iron flowers -
the shadow of their leaves is light, the web
lay on my shoulders, embraced me
like a network. Is the catch good?

Oh, how it catches us contemplating
world of shadows. Fishing tackle
spread out for us - the outline of the building,
Is the lattice flickering blue,
Is it a lion's ever-open mouth?

Slightly opened mouth - oh, isn't it here?
entrance to the underworld of Sheol,
where with a light rustle they would be resurrected
all flowers are made of metal and tin,
where an eagle would wake up with a crunch,
but where would I turn
into a motionless, shapeless lump,
into an ingot of shadow - and my voice merged
with the hum of bees over a bottomless flower...

Spring 1971

IN COLORS

In flowers exuding heat,
in the heavy-headed and sleepy
colors - in myriads and hosts
flowers rising from the rot of the earth -
transformed decay thickens
invisible creature,
flowing smell demon,
and his fingers stretch out,
sinking into my chest like into foam.
The earth also absorbed me -
hissing and bubbling -
dying life in the sand...
The wine is expensive in the cellars,
where there is mold and dampness,
flowers in an underground state, beautiful to grow -
everything will come out someday,
everything will turn into spirit.
Universe of smell! will you accept the corruptible soul
colors and flowers of an eyewitness?
Will you hug me, exuding pus from yourself,
with all the drunken memory of a never-before paradise?..

FEAST

Bold flowers bright red mouths
moisture transparent look
greedily sipped - cannot be removed.

Why are you, my eyesight, not happy?
why aren't you happy?
the very opportunity to live?

I'm not looking, and my eyelids are drooping.
Crimson shadows flicker
predatory flashes of darkness.

Even in memory they don’t let go
blood-sucking lips! Forever
the victims of the moving flowers are us.

Transformation into redheads,
in weighing down their stems
someone else's pain and life -

The purest form of love
freed from gesture and word,
earthly body, unearthly soul.

There is nothing to merge with and nothing to merge with!
There is a turning of vision into light,
transition spasm,

Werewolves endless brotherhood,
eternal sisterhood - Death and Freedom -
feast of man-flowers.

September 1972

***
When you have a flower in your hand, your fingers are clumsy,
completely strangers to me, so heavy,
and my fragile form does not need my voice,
when he is stressed or has a cold,
when it's empty, like dark corners.

When a delicate scent trembles in the hand of a flower,
then the skin of the petals is rough and rough.
Oh, where is it not constrained and where is it not in tight paws,
and where the spirit is free from the fingers of our weak ones -
from your freedom-loving slave?

***
The petal on the palm shrank and turned black
as if touched by an invisible flame...
He is torn from the rose that bears the living crown,
he strives back to his mother's womb,
but a single, short life is his nature and his limit.
How I am afraid of flowers drying up, writhing and wheezing,
flames of convulsions and collapse
petals moving in the yellow wrinkles of suffering...
They fly over the gardens like worms!
To whose lips the petal, bent, stuck,
whose palm he touched, his sweaty curl trembling,
It will only be revealed to him: nearby -
loneliness of the rose, loneliness of the bush, garden.
The loneliness of the city is its horror and blockade.
The loneliness of the homeland in some empty space.

***
Here the mind is alive, but half asleep.
Here the lizard-thought is motionless among the stones.
The lilac heat seems to cherish the earth -
but pour cold water on me with a wet lily!

Like a hot hospital room
we shake the air, scorched to the ground.
Winter was black. Spring was fraught.
Cool on a summer day, the coolness is only white.
Only white fires of water lilies above the water
they treat inflammation - blue house.
I will close the windows, I will close my eyes, -
but all around there are fires over an imaginable pond!

Icy purity and absolute color
It is only possible to save the swamp.
Flowers in rotten water. In my country there are poets.
Rotting and heat. But mortal cold is speech.

* * *
Romanticism has been stripped to its last emptiness.
What next? and fingers pass freely
through hollow eternity - isn’t it there, ethereal,
the soul flows and time blooms?

Isn't it where the smell of the finest swamps is?
almost not present in virgin thickets,
where are our most hysterical thoughts
the burden of worries is almost untouched -

Isn't that where the last romantic will die?..
The water bloomed, stagnated, froze.
There is no longer any need for will or strength,
no secret freedom, no other freedoms.

Here the music flows and drinks my blood,
like the stem of a water lily that binds your hands,
entwined around... And unexpected, in the sound
will the pain arise because the fetus is

In the painful ovary of new knowledge
about a world stripped to its core, to shame,
to the pit, to the spasms of denial...

***
For an unborn soul, what is more bitter than praise?
What is more difficult than reproach?
We have no qualities, no light, no darkness -
only barely glimmers
a shapeless lump on the point of a needle...
Oh, butterfly heart, are we really alive?

Or is your one-day takeoff so weak, heart?
weaker than the fluttering wings
a transparent butterfly that seems to not live,
only the wind feels the breath?
On the chaotic path, now a roll, then a turn -
does it matter? Why does she need distance?

And don’t ask why you’re flying head over heels,
why in the fall angular
you are looking for support, as if you were building a house
from the air and aroma
melted honey over a flower...
But the roof, Lord, is transparent and winged!

***
Oh tell me about nothing
in the shards of his glass eyes,
where there are so many berries in the meadows,
shiny drops on the coat.

Flowing into your palm
minutes lost in merging...
Oh, how many berries are in a dark hand
flickers, splashes, but touch

Lips - a wet spot.
Water that has entered the pores.
Separations, meetings or quarrels -
one touch, one

To wet skin, to hand
springy, but also clinging,
and the sad sparkle of the eyes is extinguished,
and a splash of an invisible hand...

February 1972

BLUEBERRY

“Having completed half my earthly life...”
translation from Italian

Having passed earthly life to the middle,
memory stumbled. Flipped over and froze
forest immersed in blue.

From an overturned basket
berries flow with misty eyes,
hiding out of sight into the grass...

Blueberries are death! Your glow is dove-like
lost in the dew, intangible
your taste of dampness, your ghost in reality.

But the pulp of the core bleeds -
stuck to the sky, became voices,
with which I live in crushed memory.

October 1971

CHERRY

Thick cherry, like crushed stains
berries on a white tablecloth,
a moment that turned into ripe eternity -
lived, but returned back!

That's why your lips are black, black!
Two-handled golden slingshot
dances in the teeth - and the past is sweet,
like something that never happened, where without a trace
we, the real ones, are dissolved.

We didn’t even live - two balls were shaking,
wine purple stream splashes
time - crushed cherries, juice
formerly a closed form,
full but moist like juice,
petrified in eternal sadness.

January 1972

GRAPE

The lovers are imprisoned
into translucent balls of huge grapes,
in pairs in each berry... Omnivorous
their greedy mouth, and their hands intertwined.
But in the city of wine the dreams are drunkest -
a tangle of rainbow circles, a flow of spots.

Spherical evenings.
In glass bead dwellings of light current
lovers fall asleep, hugging lonely,
entwined with ivy from neck to thigh...
But in the city - in the dream of sleeping Peter
the snake bites into the widened eye.

Why is vision not grapes?
When the snake's forked sting
inside the green berries trembled,
when the gaze returned within itself -
it just froze, it’s a helicopter city
trampled love, hoof and channel.

Only skeletons on the islands!
Their red ribs are like sleeping vines,
their faces, moistened with anesthesia,
their berries are blessed in the mouth
crushed. Flowing onto garbage land.
But the ball of heavenly glass is bright,
and time transparent snake
the lovers were wrapped in a ring of nothingness.

***
Beautifully sipped beer,
and the hop is deep, and the dream is thick green...
Here is the temptation of memory - tasted
immortality drink hasty
in another birth, where he wanders around the country
wandering philosopher, where the wine is in fermentation -
but the thought is already drunk to the point of dizziness,
and the anticipation of drinking is doubly
drunker than wine. And anticipation of life
more beautiful than life. Glossy plums
deep blue tears that fell into the grass,
lie untouched, but internally happy -
I will live forever by their sun-matter!
And in memory - as if in reality
they were not (figments of the imagination) -
student years are trembling, and whole, and full
of its blue black silence
and the juice of untasted oblivion.

QUESTION TO TYUTCHEV

We will drink away the time, and the dried-up body
Let's cover it carefully with the most delicate veil...
Kinship to native history
don’t deny, darling, don’t hope,
that the delirium of centuries and the dull captivity of minutes
passes you by - do you believe it, they will return you
good to the original owner.

And hordes of shadows from lives lived in vain
will fill the streets and rooms to the brim...
And - How to breathe? - I’ll ask Tyutchev,
and regret who?

November 1970

***
On the days of remembrance minutes,
containing the life of decades,
It’s not me who whispers: come back! It's the wind
rustles dry letters that won’t be read,
other people's lives, which we will not answer...
Oh, if only the earth would take them under cover
and calmed down - we would know: we won’t meet
silent faces and faceless voices
in books-cemeteries, in diaries-tombs.

On the days when they speak to me
gone - but deaf and blind,
I won't answer them. Only the wind, the wind is crying,
Yes, in the tin throats they rumble and wheeze
lumps of frozen tears - but meltingly hot...
On the days when warmth enters me like poison,
the warmth of the breath of everyone whose voice was lost,
whose experience has burned out, whose fluent handwriting has dried up, -
on days like this, on days and nights like this

I am only their memory, a gravestone, a garden.

Autumn 1971

DEATH OF POET

My whole life is like a hundred pages!
So many years have fallen asleep here
next to the lines. And you shout: wake up! —
he will look dull and sleepy and pitiful.

No, not even the face. Emptiness,
retaining the shape of the back of the head...
The pillow is slightly squashed, the lips are swollen,
know, and the dream came upon her for a reason,
once life is not lived - but trembles on the wrist
in veins.

Hey, wake up, my dear! Hand
a light rain ran across the pages...
Whoever leafs through us will suddenly be surprised by the bustle
whole life that miraculously could fit in
in a hospital bed, in the rough soul of an eyewitness,
where sound is linked to meaning.

Where on tiptoe at night into the yard
the chambers are taken out of the latter
two pockmarked nurses, two white and crumpled,
this life that slipped away secretly like a thief.
Only no one is chasing, no one is screaming about the loss,
only the hospital smells of bodies, and linen, and buckets,
only the invisible choir can be heard.

IN THE ORDINARY WAY

When you die, they will come after you
all the copper waves of the lowered world,
powerless slow surf,
what rattles in crowds on buses
wreaths and glass. Cold and damp.
We will be taken along Vyborgskaya to Okhta -
along the embankment past the stacks,
where the waves are copper, getting wet from the dampness,
People break down into small ones.
Where is the Smolny Cathedral Pyaterchatka
there is a lot of water in a sip of water,
where the mind sways and freezes
from the cold and the sweet moisture of the Neva.

***
When you think about what's coming
years of humiliation for us, -
vision freezes glassy,
and the ice is bluish - look -
lies motionless and flat on the object,
like ice on the steps,
leading to extinct water, leading to it,
our ossified Lethe.
When you think: no boat, no swimmer,
to catch your heart
in his slipping eternal eyewitness
on the ice of a mirror face,
addressed to us from afar, as if from above...
About the future when
think about it, but you won’t hear the cod
broken ice -
imagine then Spring in an abstract guise:
mouth slightly half open
in deep February, which shows through with rust
in the gilded sky,
like on the icons of that tender time,
where is the niello and gilt
noted the polar worlds.

Good and Evil are like two hostile fleets,
came together, mixed up the ships,
and their sea has no land attached to it.

February 1972

***
Where does the heart have a place? where is the clam
is there a place to cling to?
Here is a stone sailboat listing heavily,
a wave rises along a granite slope.
Here is the smell of a fleet rotting in the harbor -
and my heart sank to the bottom of the packet boat.
In the double proximity of sky and sea,
drenched in living mother-of-pearl,
where is the pearl island above every minute
pouring light, burning, grief?
Where a piece of unshakable firmament glimmers -
oblivion of death even for a second?

***
Blessed is the absent-mindedness in the former garden,
and weak memory is blessed...
It’s wonderful that everything is gradual
comes out like steam from the mouth -
and those whom I was waiting for - I’m not waiting for them anymore,
and those I remember - they are hidden,
how the mechanism of the fortress bridge is hidden
under the slippery paving stones, under the name of Brenna.
And the bridge will not rise anymore, and places
what kind of people they seemed
I won’t meet you here again... And take my soul
Oh, my lonely garden, the cross.
Whenever the meeting is just a tree,
awkward piles of stones -
it would be easier, and the sky would be brighter -
and not an open mouth,
where you can’t see clouds, let alone stars
or Champs Elysees.

Autumn 1971

Oh GARDEN

The garden continues in architectural torment,
like an unfinished building.
The vault of transparent radiance is not yet covered,
The chandeliers are not yet ringing with their leaves,
but all heaven's crystal pendants
already change color when the gaze shifts, -
now the ruby burns, now the pomegranate glows,
now cold-emerald, now black ice-agate.
Any splashes, sparks or splashes.

And the reservoir where everything came from,
lies colorless and imperceptible
between the column-trunks, like a mirror, like smoke
the burning leaves are clouded...
And the purpose of the bright loggias of the park
It's still dark. Out of spite here
Shouldn't the temple grow to the sky, so that it can lie
relief on the soul, and a wing,
the tense arch of the heavenly swallow,
touched the ground with a shadow - and her face?

Hardly a church... Or a palace
Is there an eternal skeleton here? memory of the Baroque?
But the clouds fell too low
the ornament of the branches is heavy, and melancholy
unenlightened, sunk deep
in the unseeing pond, in the glass of his pupil.

Rather, the garden is the cold house of the Creator,
left to grow empty and uncomfortable,
so that in a momentary existence
Have you forgotten that there is no end to life?

September 1972

***
Who knows which of the insignificant worries
which of the household needs
owes spirituality a look?
Look, your companion seems to be alien
everyday life, touching like a garden,
branches to tender heights.

Look: his face is animated
the winding tree of his thoughts,
and internally the leaves tremble -
not a traveler on a trolleybus, but a creature
born in the house of dryads,
looks at the houses and trees - out the window,
sliding flat back.

Look: his eyes are there, on the glass,
filled with sorrow flowing
almost for no reason, almost...
Don't ask what made you sad? - labor
in vain... And if you ask, forgive me,
when he remains silent in response.
In the languor of a fellow traveler, in the agony of the journey
there is no sublime reason,
like the tree of words on this earth,
like thoughts that flow after you,
there is no power to elevate humiliated nonsense,
no further wandering.

***
The forehead is beautiful when it is disfigured
wing-like fold
from a sad but sweet thought,
intertwined with the cloudy landscape.

The soul is captured by this love fight
nature of thought with this thinking nature,
whose kiss is the thousandth
feels like swamp fever.

I'm asking if we untie
sad knot, will there be freedom
that state with love and work,
where the very air is not colored with sadness?
I ask - if only on the sly
not to look out the window, at least reluctantly, -
how terrible the sight of sudden death would be!

Not a blue range of heavenly towers,
but the body, shaken by vomit,
but a thought worn out by the mob and consumption.

April-May 1972

* * *
There is a competition between a pedestrian and a shadow -
either behind her back or rushing forward.
The winding road turns,
and warm dust to the touch.

This is how love glows between two:
one is just a shadow, just a shadow at the feet of the other.
Mixed with the dust of half a field day,
fell silent in the burning grass.

But slowly it will lean toward sunset
half-molten sun at his temple.
Like a dark cool river
the shadow, lengthening, moves.

It flows over the distant hills,
touching the horizon with a light edge.
And we won't recognize each other anymore
inseparable from the onset of darkness.

***
And never let your reflection merge with your face!
And never break through this film of nervous tissue!
Hat on the ground! And back to the mirror! And that's the end of it.
We are all comrades here because we are vertical to the ground.

They will surround me with a circle, or a toast
the Caucasus will flare up, shower stars into the sea,
but never touch the guttural word or the stars,
not within reach of the Caucasian foothills!

Was it to Andrei Bely when he was dying?
in their crooked alleys of Arbat,
the mountain ridge moved closer, Daryal opened up near the lips,
the double glacier of Ararat trembled under my fingers...

Autumn 1969

* * *
Oh, how selfish sadness is!
Everything does not part with the mirror -
is about to merge with itself,
It's about to dissipate - and the sun will bend
in the face of the wavering bay.

Oh, like deserted eyes,
shrouded in the shadow of moisture,
she looks into herself - and freezes
in it is a beloved world with people and voices.
Trees, music and flags!

In festive sadness, in sadness,
trembling and multi-colored,
all our lives have been lived in vain
life will be resurrected!

October 1971

And it's true...

And we are yesterday's lands...
our days are a shadow on earth.
Book Job

Indeed, we are yesterday's Earth!
Thousand-year-old pipe
the springs that have come also shimmer,
and thin housewarming suns.

Indeed, our days are settled
in houses of shadows and ghosts,
where the suns lived are glossy black
on the cockroach backs of resurrections.

And you can see, however, the temple of the spider
named dwelling,
where experience and science are a handful of sand,
flying into a cauldron of boiling food!

But the web of death is so thin
oh, how thin and silvery,
like steam over the victim, like feather clouds,
like the white cloak of an evangelist!

It swirls and flies and curls behind your back,
and unrolling like a scroll,
cries about a past life, about one,
with its wretched excess.

March-April 1972

ANGEL OF WINTER

Angela got frosty
with the wooden sound of wings,
stand up on the roof, sad
in the middle of a spiritual gap
waiting for the hour to strike.

Angel, that's awkward
leaning on the wing like a crutch,
petrified by the cold, -
both the light and the north are foreign to the angel,
The snowy dust is unbearable.

To an angel whiter than snow,
stronger than crystalline ice,
a ghost town has appeared, a fictional town,
city-dream of the swirling sky -
image of the world after the Last Judgment.

* * *
The silvery twilight river, dimming, goes out,
The unexpected light cannot be saved.
But if the night is ahead of us, and if speech
will talk about death - there is nothing more beautiful,
than in the city that will outlive us,
where time has stopped moving
in official life - in anticipation of execution.

God was sent. The city blue was created
for the redemption of earthly existence.
Silvery twilight, a through stream -
oh, here the story will become hoarse and cold!
The window is not open to Europe - it’s warm there -
into the icy garden, where sorrow is dead and evil,
and the snow tornado froze in the middle.

November 1971

EARTHLY CITY

Our dusty grains of hail -
not a grain of blackened plains,
The city is earthly and official, and I am a citizen,
among others, almost guessed.

Among others, we bring them underground
perfect by the rat catcher...
The dark rustle of the human stream
the secret voice will become mine.

City of the earth. Not earthly - underground!
On alien heights it burns
that secret Italy in white flowers,
blue comet in the gothic sky of Gammeln.

I'll close my eyes - they'll flash in the darkness
a herd of rocks and a green sea -
eternal meadow Jokima del Fiore,
days of prayers and dolphins, crystal drops of minutes...

How long they flow down your cheeks,
as if the speed in the window had died.
Funeral field of glass
how black and deserted!
So black and deserted that I
and I don’t recognize my face -
maybe a white spot near the edge,
a light flashed - a light needle pierced
black twilight of movement and non-existence.

April 1972

GOLODAI ISLAND

The people misheard. Cool Holiday
became the frozen Goloday - Decembrists.
Here is the Smolensk cemetery. So close
his crosses through the crossed branches...

Looks like I'm not looking from the other shore
the Smolenka River, and the churchyard -
not yet this wasteland, but there is a deserted bridge,
from where you look down at the reflections of the stars
from the black, empty sky.

There is the Smolensk cemetery. Resin
with the prayer of mixed darkness,
which has thickened in time, however,
even today the flesh of his warmth.
It seems that the earth still retains its breath
your animal's warmth,
and that damp fog that covered
glass of history, desert glass, -
it both cools and warms.

October-November 1971

BYPASS CHANNEL

Twilight. The rain is frequent.
Dull flashes on black.
Your pupil shines dimly,
Is it filled with moisture, filled with anger,
Are you touched by a corrupting spirit?
landfills, canals, grievances.

If you look, he’s in a hurry, leaving
in the shadow of a transcendental house,
mix with the sound of the rain,
become weightless with soot -
frightened traveler, pogroms
and a child of revolutions.

Or will you lower your eyes -
you'll shudder. Spinning in a ditch
red light cutter,
the darkness gnaws and drills...

October 1971

LANDSCAPE OF DACHNOY

Is someone's presence a burden?
or do you transfer it outside
heart stone. And the rock-swamp
creaks underfoot. Ice work
being together is like being folded twice.

Among the frozen blocks of the plain
depopulated, became frozen
two-winged shadow, double-winged shadow
stone-bird flying south, sparrow,
but flying without moving, without moving on the fly.

November 1971

IN THE EKATERININSKY CANAL

As if it hasn’t been built yet - it’s just glimmering in the mind
deceased architect - ripples in the yellow channel
six-column child, child of panache and sorrow,
stony-faced child, conceived in green darkness.

And leaning over the water, and weaving into the ornament of the railing,
part of the cast iron grate at the bottom,
I see how the architect once stood, both flowing and staggering,
over the repetition of the building, which he himself repeated,

Taking the mansion of an Italian prince as a model,
seen dimly in abandoned childhood, at the bottom...
Everything is a reflection, God, and everything, distorted in me,
relates to life in the same way as garland chains on a vase

Plaster - to living roses, to roses that stand
on the windowsill of the house in an invisible glass,
in the suspected glass only among the splashes and flickering
reflections of glass piercing the unsteady façade...

January 1972

GRIBOEDOV CANAL

And a festival of garbage. And a muddy festival of delirium.
And the resurrection of the stone in yellowness
channel named after the sufferer Griboyed,
channel with trash sky at the bottom.

Wasn't it a mushroom year? wasn't it a year like rain,
that up and down, top and hole
are now identical in you, artist
a dank goose feather?

In the solemn game of fossilized smoke
with a ridge of flowing stones, isn't it you
foggy duel on doubles
Do you see a writer turned to dust?

Am I not here breathing that greenery and dust,
that mixture of dust and water,
What's in your name mushroom abundance
left traces of bare feet?

The plank wheels creak from the frozen waves,
and a timid rare snowball
in the whitish dusk flies bare-haired -
a dotted line, drawn easily, falling askew...
On the shroud day there is a stitch.

February 1972

NEVSKY SOAP FACTORY

Hanging at the intersection of two cultures
the soap factory will help,
whose windows dimly look at the Neva,
whose tongue, hanging out, turns purple.

PRECURSOR

Who is he? dusty yards of bastards?
or more empty streets?
along the fence of flickering boards
thundered and fell silent.

Drowned around the corner in a gateway,
in the trash can, maybe a little...
Who is he - a homeless person or the execution of the Lord
first stone, pledge?

September 1972

LYMPH

The midday lymph flows slowly.
Pale juice fermented at random
in the ashen corners and crannies of limb,
over cat corpses and fence rods.

The philosopher meets the nymph ajar
at garbage cans for conversations
about the structure of death, about the fate of waste,
about a bicycle cycle-wheel.
The rim is half flattened. The spokes are broken.
From an empty bucket
as if from a deeply depressed eye socket
a hole falls out with a crash.

St. Nicholas's Cathedral

Two double columns
St. Nicholas Cathedral
took the lantern from the darkness...
My house is white and green
there are fewer and fewer of you - soon
you will become a drop of light
at the point of the needle.

The soul will leave, dressed
on your nightly vigil
drooping eyelashes,
as if really somewhere -
high candles movement,
shadows slanting wings
on yellow spots on faces...

In a senseless effort
move - that way
only happens in a dream -
I lay in the dust of death,
a cluster of black branches,
the soul sank into darkness,
but it was quiet for me.

And everything that I dreamed before
flowed into a bottomless pit
dead November...
All that has been preserved is:
two double columns
by the light of a lantern.

November 1971

CLOCK OF NIKOLSKAYA BELL TOWER

When from the Nikolskaya Bell Tower
the thin clock will strike,
you will forget, Lord, how painful it is
time is beating on us. But so pure
the touch of copper to the wind,
and the ringing sliding along the canal,
similar to the correct answer
to the darkness of unspoken complaints.

* * *
This courtyard
a piece of stolen life...
If only there weren't an old woman sitting in the black skeleton garden,
if her chin would not tremble and the rain would not thump dully
about her coat, which had become tough as the body of a beetle,
if the cat would not claw the black earth at her feet -
If only this river of garbage death were a little warmer,
which gradually envelops us...
If only you weren't shivering so much, if you weren't shaking -
this patio
would become our house and a pause in that conversation,
where any of the words falls out of your hands hard.

November 1971

***
Children of half-culture
We live with a half-childish smile.
Isn’t it about us, intertwined, the stucco cupids
on the decadent houses of the pre-Soviet era

They gossip - and slyly
They threaten us with a secret finger -
It’s as if our house is not a home at all, but pure fun.
The empire is spreading magnificently. A power is dying in celebration.
The stones hold on miraculously. The windows are squinting suspiciously.

We'll hang Beardsley too
over cast iron, Bavarian workmanship,
the camp of our sinner, the snake-haired bee Salome,
filling the faceted honeycomb rooms with honey.

Just as empty and wild
will be in our rooms. In the basements
at home on Gorokhovaya, red carnations are splashing,
splashed all over the walls... And the governor himself, look,
receives belated guests.

Miloradovich, darling,
the general's chime rings
numerous chandeliers - or is it a passing gun
shakes both the Trinity Bridge and the Palace Bridge... The church mug.
A penny fell with a bow for the construction of God's temple.

So let's remember the departed
in golden and fat modernity!
Isn’t it about them in the cast-iron garlands, in the shriveled ones,
the honey of our memory flows, our evening honey...
Our lives, roughly experienced half a century ago,
secret bees hover - sucking the blackened facade.

February 1972

GRAD PHARMACEUTICAL

Compared to the brisk start
centuries are put to shame.
The experience of scanty moisture.
A hairy bottle of silence.

From a beaker in divisions, into thirds
full of light
look into the Leningrad flask
with the keen eye of a poet -

Here's something for clean pharmacies.
On a rhythmic glitch
glassy fingers snow
push it under the tongue between you and yourself.

Here is Elenium - the air is green,
light of lake ice.
On twisted columns
the starry sky is set. Star

From Moorish lace vault,
dizzy, brought to the temple -
and stands motionless. And the silence hums subtly
under the ground-in cork of the past year.

Experience of semi-reality of knowledge
growing in a secret pocket,
reaching such rattling heights,
that the membranous fin is the mast of his drug addiction -
The bone tip will scratch your mouth from the inside.

We are at the Hong Kong roadstead
In the bamboo city junk
drawn sharply and subtly
echinoderm, tympanic rain of eardrums.

Rain. And in new areas
A glass web floats.
Unnaturally thin in the wind,
more unreal than China,

The man is in a state of display.
Dialogue of mannequins,
theatrical without spring,
mutual action-captivity.

We are free to remain silent.
Purple lips dive
into the hysteria of artificial lighting,
into the deliberate aquarium of the night. Seal

Wiping Mongoloid blood from the forehead,
Didn't you hear the buzzing of the glowing tubes?
The man at the display window is flattened. Monkey face.
Two frog palms. Each one has a destiny.

There are no uglier hands. Underdeveloped eyelids
translucent film breathes.
The light hums continuously and subtly.
A man leaned towards the display window.

We penetrated the glass, we returned to the guise of a child,
We, growing old, have reached the embryo - upward,
to the homunculus in the flask, to the thought in the king's brain,
to the leech-star that clung to his temple.

This is experience - illness.
Catalepsy of a moment,
where in one hieroglyph of an injection - how cramped! —
The entire Russian history is crammed into a book.

December 1974

GUEST

Let the guest into the black corner -
settles in, hangs up an engraving
Over the bed. Love for St. Petersburg -
something like a withered finger.

Show him and he will be naked
in a pinched-flawed grimace
yard of sick pigeons, pale paint,
Yes, in the lime - the shoulder of an eyewitness.

Under the sinkers of the Petrovsky fleet
I expose my gloomy crown,
and drop by drop - hollowing,
that history is only work.

Why do I need you, son of a bitch,
allowed him to crawl to bed?
so that you can see: in rottenness and bloom
the dying card is beautiful.

I feel sorry for my mortal youth too,
and the unbearable desire to return
under the Andreevsky shot of the frigate,
into the unfinished ship's forest.

I'm ashamed, but I'm looking at a fake
under the baroque excitement of sheep,
admiring: will look cruelly
old paint stain through the whitewash.

Looked through and seemed to come to life
a dead city suspended in gauze -
wet cheese drying in a sheepfold
for God's Christmas table.

Isn't this an excuse for us?
damn favorite sharpness,
if the severity of aging
Did the buildings recognize us before?

Through amorphous dwellings
with sticky household knots
Isn't joy revealed?
the Lord's parable about the beggar?

Look at you, disgusted,
in front of the razor mirror of heaven -
to the cut and scar on the neck
the line becomes thinner - pity.

The arrow-shaped takeoff is thinning,
rests on the hole under the throat...
Are you talking in your black corner,
that I live comfortably, harmlessly,

Or betrayed to a bitter seed,
(window sill, offending plant)
unable to turn away from the view
blue lips under artificial light.

What will they whisper? What Gangut?
many years of glory-gangrene?
Clinging to reliable decay,
to the spray of corpse poison fireworks!

Are you sleeping? Elbow goes numb
and hear a tin drop -
that the map is eager to touch,
between the palm of the hand and the wall...

Mentally touching the lumpy
image surfaces,
I choose defeat
like a clean exit or exhalation.

Is it true that I don’t sleep with someone who is sleeping?
It seems to me that it’s just a pretense -
a choked handful of breath,
rain is both heavier and sweeter.

Is it a change of style?
Is betrayal not justified?
Kamena's Clouded Gaze
stone full of dust.

Difficult between sleep and reality
bend of the arm. The back of her head
getting heavier. I can't
free yourself from the title.

Let the guest into the black corner!
In addition to the camera-bed-obscura,
there is an illusion of architecture,
the prospect of nights in the corridors.

I have a quote, a copy, a mask,
I will repay by stripping the meat
and behind the rust of the red frame -
of the whole earth with the nakedness of Ahriman!

* * *
I would be more sorry for a stone in case of war.
Why feel sorry for us when we ourselves are guilty! —
What we have created is so much purer,
so much higher are those who are dead here.
Purpose of a thing and fate
mysterious, as if we were rented
nature has given up, but the time will come -
and will demand everyone to answer
master of forms, what a hurry
we gave the blind material...
The purpose of the thing is the same fear,
that will throw us headlong into the blanket,
will make you hunch and hear a thin whistle -
It gets sharper as you get closer.
To freeze in horror is the purpose of the thing,
Petrify forever - the dead are pure.

***
They are building bomb shelters.
In the middle of the yards
human-sized concrete houses
grew up with me.

The fear will calm down, the heart will be comforted,
there will be reliable shelter.
The corner pharmacy will lie like a meadow -
will turn green in the spring.

Sage and yarrows -
a heap of medicinal herbs,
smelling of the city, smelling of an underground house,
tomorrow will bring.

And the concrete stairs will open
in asphalt-filled courtyards...
We're going down the steps of salvation
we slowly go down into the canopy

Giant asphodel flowers,
tulips of soot and darkness...
Bunker, subway or crevice -
beautiful, beautiful is the prepared house!

* * *
And the squalor of style and refuge in every yard
arouses in me compassion and fear of disaster
inevitable. Run abroad, to gardens or stanzas,
sit in a hole -

But every possibility is disgusting, except one:
keep the last light burning on the wall,
and saturate the gaping eyes with brick dust -
unearthly beauty!

ANGEL OF WAR

The weak will survive. And the angel Golden Hair
will descend into the bomb shelter, emitting sweet light,
the hour when the jaws of days close on the wrists,
the clock stopped.

A person sleeping under a yellow light bulb will barely survive,
collected with wire - a black muzzle of fear.
An angel will appear to him, and from the wings of a transparent flapping
he will tremble like grass.

A mortal will survive, awakened by the chill of the soul.
He will see himself naked, spread out on concrete slabs.
An angel will bend over him and ascend in the orbits
two lonely planets filled with tears;
in each - resurrected, reflected in their dark water.

* * *
Moonless words burn
invisible, like alcohol...
Like a flame, barely visible,
stands above the city.
The wind will rush and the tongue
will sway, tremble...
Not a crack, not a flash, not a cry,
not a rustle in my ears -
gasoline burns shapelessly
in fire garages.
The rectification buzzes secretly
in hospitals under glass,
where the floorboards don't creak,
where the dying sleep
comrades nearby.
The book depositories are ringing
elastic ashes of books,
when the sheets are compressed,
going in helically
into the native holes of muteness,
into the gaping voids,
in darkness and decay... - What are you doing?!

RAT

But what we call conscience -
Isn't it a rat with red eyes?
Isn't it a rat with red eyes?
secretly watching us,
as if present in everything,
what was given to the night, what became
a belated memory,
repentance, a burning dream?

Here is the dream eater
a rat comes, a friend of the underground...
The rat comes, a friend of the underground,
to the underground resident who is in pain
ready to suffer spiritually.
And the mouth is strewn with teeth,
before him, like the sky with stars -
so conscience will answer the call.

Two hand-made coals will burn,
digging painfully into the skin.
Painfully digging into the skin
underground to a resident, I look like
on a rat. Two - the Lord's court -
fire. Two eyes in pitch darkness.
What pain is the bite of sinful flesh
or rat hidden labor,

When the writer in Rus'
fate - squeaking under the floorboards!
Fate squeaks under the floorboards,
sing to the sharp-faced people,
with a purple sheen. Save
us, righteous one! With a crimson face,
sitting underground with no tongue
as if completely in heaven!

TO THE MAN OF THE UNDERGROUND

Guests are coming to the man of the underground and after midnight.
The claws of muffled voices and the stair stone will exude
And the vessel of impaired hearing will be filled with roar -
then the icy water hums alone,
then the whisper will mix with the falling drops of minutes
in the black throat of the well, and the whisper roars and rumbles.

To the man of the underground, to the drifting snow of the desert land,
a high-pitched voice was given, almost beyond the limits of hearing,
but in the well-yards where he lives, where they brought him
a handful of weak white fluff
winds of burning and soot, as if from a muddy distance
His voice can be heard both grumpily and muffled.

My mouth is full of his dust. Underground under the belly of the table.
The phosphorus sickle is suspended in the lighting (out of fear
before night), but the darkness is thicker during the month,
the pulp of the pillow is tougher than the block.
A man from the underground is waiting for guests. The guest came in.
Smiles. Her suffering sugar melts her teeth.

January-February 1972

TO THE PORTRAIT OF N.N.

Must be a stylized portrait
regicides with quiet eyes
everything would still be stuck in the window frame,
clutching your fingers into a gilded baguette.
How blue they turned! Cramp or what?
suddenly brought together? Nibbled nails
scratching, clinging. Screaming children
there behind the wall, on the street, in the wild.

It must be that immobility is not his thing,
but any action smells like meat -
the singed fur of a fallen hero,
pupil with crushed yolk...
His flared nostrils. And the eye sockets -
two black holes in non-breathing glass...
Yes, that's the only way, with a portrait on the table
and the silhouette outside the window - don’t move.

Must be a terrorist of non-existence
a messenger to this world of treason and movement -
it is full of death, full of temptation
step beyond the frame, go beyond the edges!
But his creator was poor and sick
consumption, as always, and a sick hand
covered his face with the last whiteness,
and forced his blue lips into silence.

SMOKE OF STONE

Events are dead. Some legends are alive.
And the sharp stone smoke in the Gothic fire
everything reaches towards the sky, everything reaches out, happy...

Oh, the Gothic soul is unexpected in goodness,
but the memory is cold, and the stone does not warm the hands...
You look out the window - it’s chilly in the yard -

And in the stuffy room the back of my head freezes.
The soul survived the Middle Ages.
She remembers everything, took everything, and everything from there is with her,

Only the dancing stone has lost its tongue,
only the flame in the hearth turned to stone,
but seems alive from afar.

Events are dead. Words have returned to action.
But even the word is mortal, and when
his mirror body will melt in the glass, -

All that's left is a drop of shame...
What to do with emptiness, unconsciousness and torment
a soul that leaves no trace,

From the vanity of your thousand arms?

April 1972

FLUTE OF TIME

A passerby regrets the time
not lived, but completely passed,
and music is like silence,
and sadness will not overcome the heart of silence,

Not the sound of footsteps, shapeless and flat...
Over the square overgrown with grass -
the guards palace is in high order,
echoes of a mad flute.

Goat-like troops are running.
Here is Marsyas the ensign, skipping. —
Here music is not relaxation, but shortness of breath.
Here is the flayed skin - in the trembling of the flag!

A passerby, a particular person,
will sneak by the side of the parade...
But the music, filled with silence,
like an insect frozen in amber,

The fragile movement seems to be preserved,
although she herself is deprived of movement...
To the passerby - belts and time,
and here the sublime flute flies away!

And her call, almost otherworldly,
her needle piercing the ear,
in a silent sea of butterflies and flies,
on the beds of recruits planted in columns,

Reigns and cries - cries and reigns...
And music mossy black trunk
entered a passerby like a thorn,
entwined with a snake of shimmering melody.

January 1972

CLIO

They fell on their faces and licked the hot dust.
The vanquished walked - the sackcloth herd lowed.
The winners walked like large drops of hail.
Mountain streams howled. The soul of the waterfall roared.
Witch story. Sweaty neck. Crutch.

Clio, to you, white with dust and salt,
Clio, with a stick above the rumbling sea of wheels, -
the winners were walking - a convoy of fat life,
the defeated millipede walked and grew
bitter winds, a lonely flower in the middle of a field.

Clio with a flower. Blue crone of the valleys.
Clio with a horsetail and Clio in rags of fog,
Clio, and Clio, and Clio, incoherent and drunk,
kissing all departing troops, and peoples, and countries
into the gray abysses of the eyes or into the blinded heart of clay.

CASSANDRA

In the bronze mirror there is a quiet fool, a fool
sees his face vague and insoluble...
A finger in the mouth or frowning eyebrows.
Be quiet, they say, if you live in the kingdom of mice.

Into the distance of wordless Greece with a red tint,
with the copper greenery of the sea, the deaf-mute stared.
Her soul cries, embracing all the emptiness
between the pupils and the mirror - a happy cloud stood up.
The past is connected with the future by a faint shadow,
with a barely noticeable movement inside the golden disk,
and the mooing of the prophetess is only torment on the outside,
there is silence in it itself - silence and glow...
The sea of the dissolved moon moves closer to the face.

The past and the future are like a face with a reflection,
as if tin and copper merged in the Bronze Age.
In the bronze mirror are there lips with a sick movement?
Are these red eyelids due to insomnia?
or the glow of a fire?.. Troy does not end - a certain
a future city with a population of millions.

January 1972

HAIL

Light cloudy sky.
Dazzling green roofs.
The hail hits the loam of the ditches.
So submissive to intervention from above
the clay of life both sticks and molds
myself, secretly correcting

Yourself. City under heaven
with heavy shoes he will trample the ground,
but in the given light it is easy
she's all on fire, as if they're vaulting
the ceiling in this cramped little room,
in this cell of candle language!

The wonderful city was opened to the chronicler.
Dazzling green roofs.
Casts of drops on clay live.
This is probably how cuneiform breathes
in an extended desire to get drunk
icy shocks of minutes.

CHRONICLER

From the creation of the world meager years
six thousand and a bit... So, it's a bit of a time.
Like an invisible dog walks among everyone.
Six thousand years like the devil's seed
came up into the light like a yarrow.

And watching the ancient game
the slightest thin tongue
smoldering bowl of darkness, whose troops
came from all sides, fell from the ceiling,
sneaked like a shadow to the white feather,

The chronicler will write this year,
abundant with witches, fires and pestilence,
desired prophecy of the coming
end of the universe.
The raven will call three times.
Write it down, Lord, and the happy one will die.

Six thousand bricks bound with such a mortar,
that the rat of time (nobody's creation),
will bleed a cave tooth,
shredding walls - otherness
clay will receive, which has become a cathedral,

Where at the base is a wax old man,
faded away like a candle in a good deed,
like a candle, barely visible in the morning,
no matter how closely one looks at the flame
eyes like the dawn gives milky smoke.

February 1972

ENOCH

How far is calm asceticism
saint on the rock.
Birch blood oozes from the cut
on a ghostly trunk.
How green is the juice expelled from the body,
born in the darkness
Praying to the Lord is the only thing
what keeps you on the ground.

He raises his black palms
his face is in ash.
Around him are horses raging on fire.
In violence and evil
history flows - but time is on the icon
there is a monk on the rock.
I, Lord, stand, and my lips are wet
from juice or tears!
Take my voice, take my drawn-out
transparent forest of birches...

May-June 1972

CLOSING THE FACE

Furrowed by the most delicate claws
brought her face closer. - Old woman!
Who is hooked between people by name

Has a hearing benefit
and vision. Name books
sound full and dull,

As if the speaker is placed
into the beer barrel and from there
announces the end of times,

Under the hoop is a fattening miracle.
My ears are filled with future wine,
my old hearing is as sensitive as possible -

All the names came together. And in one seed
The forest is already raging, autumn is already dying.
But are we really living in history?

We are only a pronoun when asked,
do we live at all? She herself
like a field in furrows sown with winter,

Got closer. Winter has arrived
stories. Oh, child's old age
on the ice of the river in Flemish letters!

He is more nameless than a tree. So subtle
his consciousness is intertwined with the sky,
that the film is tearing and grinding,

Clinging to the history of cinema, -
quoting, clawing and returning to the source,
finds a camera entering the window,

Finds the pose the prophet needs
in his profession to predict
frontal turn to the east.

He is nameless. His live speech
surrounded by winter. Like a barrel
he is full of inner speech: lie down

Face down in a snowdrift (I'm just a shell
for the secret heat!) and listen to how it hisses,
As the snow melts, the soil warms.

But he got up and filmed it. The view has changed
with such haste that there was no faith left.
No matter what he says, no matter how he says it.

Burning bush (on the gray horizon
plains of speech) no matter how blazing -
nothing exceeds the measure,

Doesn't add names to bodies!
Nothing has a name and no one has.
And I - from “we”, broken in half,

A thinking fragment. When she moves
face, scarred by claws,
what we? - I ask - what's wrong with them today?

Everything historical - here it is - take it off!
Living outside the ranks and outside the clan -
one love, they seem like children

And the third does not reach a year.

December 1975

IMAGE CONFIRMATION

Oh yes, on the golden waves
straw boat of the state
drags along with sleepy clay oarsmen.

Oh yes, and the sea's gilded medicine,
the sick Peter offered to us,
We drank as we came out into the lakes,
canals, ducts into the bay.
And so they scrape along the bottom, through the raw gold
holey oars, dark dentures...
The country-galley is dragged along,
powerlessly lowering the oars...
The cloud above her is the soul, the antithesis?

Country-centipede, its
touching the shapeshifter,
crawling somewhere with its paws...

Among the toy rowers there is a slave
my face. Let's swim. The movement is a celebration.
And the sea melts above us like a candle.

April 1972

CHORUS

Multi-tiered choir on screen
languishing in lonely ether
lump song, the melancholy of the pyramids
and the golden rustling of sands...
How incomprehensible are the words of the Egyptians,
how formless are the bursts of harit!

A sip over the government armada -
only the lotus has a fragile fracture,
just an elbow, glimpsed secretly,
only the rustle of straw boats...
But military Egypt cap -
our homeland, field and home.
Yes, I listen to the singing of basalt,
and into the solution of thousands of lips,
into the abyss of time, into the sea of asphalt
I'm plunging headlong like a corpse.
Only the immortal soul, woven into a funeral wreath,
along the black current of song flows to the east.

- Sovereign, you are our sirin!
warrior dog and jackal voice!
Chorus in the bottomless desert ether
sang over the carrion, sang - did not stop.

BENI-GASSAN

Birds bloomed and swayed in Beni-Gassan,
misty flowers crawled...
Painted tomb walls
Egypt is protected from the sea of emptiness.
The house of Egypt is spacious, and huge
his kings, but their mouths are closed.
Here is the bottom of silence, here is the niche of silence,
here is the house of the afterlife of music and words.

In Beni Ghassan, in the western meadows,
transparent food grazing,
blind boats flow at random,
only white flowers scrape the bottom with their claws,
only voiceless birds hang
over your own black shadows...
Such is Egypt, which travels with us,
the shadow of life, not life, the shadow of a garden, not a garden.

Yes, such is the country that closes before death
its borders, walls and forests -
voices turn to stone in it,
and the echo in the stone tomb is mercy.

PROCESSION

Fear the Shu who come from the north
Kung Tzu

The turns of the stairs are toothless...
In the kingdom of Shu, where we go down alone,
the restless birds scream from the torches,
mongoloid slow lips
slightly parted with a faceless smile
towards us in the stone shadow.

In the kingdom of Shu, where we descend deeper and deeper,
Nauseating gasoline writhes,
oily lakes breathe...
Soaked in, my voice is muffled
the splash of the walls and the reflections of the choir,
coming muffled from the depths.

What are you babbling about the Hellenic orchestra?
The voices here are not dressed in white.
In the state of Shu from narrow-eyed cracks
streams of suffocating gas
to the smoky vaults, and into the eyes
baby milk flows...
Listen and you too will become a stone,
you will become a multiple rumble,
In the secret Shu, present everywhere,
time passes transparently
on the lips of a laughing Buddha,
in a dance of flames of shifting cheekbones.

The swaddled child is suffocating,
embraced by the wing of smoldering fire,
smoke of black sticks of Tibet...
We are sinking lower and lower - and there is no need
nothing anymore - no air, no light,
It seems that I am free from me.

We go down the stairs slimy.
The line is endless - but look:
how similar our faces and movements are.
My life, divided into lives,
a new person is just a new moment,
disappearing into the stone shadow.

And when I turn it's transparent
because it addresses me
because both are absorbed
Shu’s happiness, universal, - not otherwise -
we see only all-forgiving anger -
there the child smiles in his sleep.

September 1972

RAINBOW

ANGEL OF THE RAINBOW

The soul splits into seven separate colors.
And death is not with a scythe, but rather looks like a prism.
And if we move along the rainbow, everyone is ready to fall apart.
And the weightless bridge beneath us trembles, sagging.
When the seven-branched candlestick stands in seven tongues,
Does prayer then have seven shadows?
and if the river beneath us trembles and sparkles like a razor,
and music, a seven-headed baby in his hands -
Will pure crying then save him from falling?
Will the shaky board hold on for a moment longer?
Or, disintegrating, the soul and the united one will lose its language,
like a child who grew up in an atheist family?
Or, disintegrating, the soul disappears, and only over the river
you see a rainbow, you hear blind music -
Those who left yesterday, those who left yesterday are sad,
but isn’t it for you, who lives with a speechless longing?

* * *
Porcelain music will reveal
translucent, flame-like petals,
and into the shepherd's world, without blood and melancholy,
into the fields enchanted by the game
shadows in the grass, which are bright and light, -
there, into the artificial forests,
to where our happy doubles are,
like you and I in upside-down binoculars,
from us who live on the soot of the earth,
separated by glass and distant, -
Music will let us in there, into something else,
but being, in a reasonable age of peace,
that he bled, that he was torn to shreds,
that he became clay, as all living things will become, -
but with baked clay - blue
and white clay, whose shards are priceless.

***
Unhealing repeat
lies on everything I touch
smile-convulsion. Corner
half-lowered mouth -
this is the edge of silence, when the inaudible chorus
brings the building under the dome,
placing the shadow of a finger on his lips.

Then over the years it becomes more and more difficult,
gasping for breath over every sound,
the word is given. But by replacing -
open the lakes, palm,
close to the face. In it
draw with dried foam,
paint with cold and ice

An uninhabited house.

September 1974

APPEAL

All appeals in verse flow like smoke,
through dark houses and squares and bridges...
And now the faceless, now Tyutchev’s “you” -
not a woman, not a friend, but an invisible listener,
one living ear of emptiness.

It doesn’t matter what to talk about, but talking
poems - addressed to only one,
who is the heart of things, and the eye, and the window,
who, like a mirror, is free to manifest...
He will take your breath like a stain.

* * *
In the days when poems wander and flow,
in those days when no one asks for poetry,
and these evenings - I wish they were off my shoulders as quickly as possible! —
when speech is barely audible and shallow,
only faintly silver... How they carry it out
silence two ear cavities?
Isn’t it the sea that makes noise in them, like in shells?
And on these days, and on other days
poems live like noise - sometimes louder, sometimes weaker.
What do we care about them? Do they concern
before our lives hidden in the shadows
or revealed as a hanged man on a yardarm?
What size does the body swing,
bustling about in dirty white canvas?
Beautiful? Yes. Free? Yes. Floats
over the ocean's phosphoric stew
round dance of twinkling constellations,
barely visible through the steam touching the waters
with light feet made of light and fog...
Are ghosts so ethereal?
or poetry when they're free
from everything that perished in us lives.

Autumn 1971

NARROW CORRIDOR
WITH TRELLIES FOR EYE REST

EDUCATION
(tellises in octaves on a secular theme)

For an enlightened monarch
gazebos have been built
in those industries of the continuous park,
where is the reigning silence
does not destroy noise. Guinea fowl
doesn't cluck loudly. But the pine trees
healthy smell, like medicine,
The head is useful to the state.

Leaving the retinue behind the bushes
weave intrigues and wreaths,
he scrolls alone
Voltaire - here they are, the sprouts
freethinking! Thick
foliage - there are islands of light in it.
But wisdom is sunspots -
Few minds are still clear.

The paper rustles so pleasantly.
A cow moos in the distance.
He comes back -
Voltaire under his arm, and in his hand
a flower picked in private.
The bee is heavy in the flower,
trembling, fidgeting... -
Isn't it true that whatever happens,

For good? And in essence, ruddy,
like a pig, whole
fried like a honey spirit
over this plucked flower,
over this sunny meadow -
above the world is God, slightly with a belly,
slightly with catarrh and shortness of breath,
with Voltaire sunny armpit!

VIKTOR KRIVULIN
in the MIDDLE OF THE WORLD